Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9225-z
Sarah Manski2 · Ben Manski1
Abstract The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the con-
temporary sovereign order. Some go further to claim that as a powerful decentering
technology, blockchain contests the continued functioning of world capitalism. Are
such claims merited? In this paper we consider sovereignty and blockchain tech-
nology theoretically, posing possible futures for sovereignty in a blockchain world.
These possibilities include various forms of individual, popular, technological, cor-
porate, and techno-totalitarian state sovereignty. We identify seven structural ten-
dencies of blockchain technology and give examples as to how these have mani-
fested in the construction of new forms of sovereignty. We conclude that the future
of sovereignty in a blockchain world will be articulated in the conjuncture of social
struggle and technological agency and we call for a stronger alliance between tech-
nologists and democrats.
Who decides in a blockchain world, and by what authority? In this paper we con-
sider possible futures for sovereignty and blockchain technology, including forms of
individual, popular, technological, corporate, and new state sovereignty. Identifying
* Sarah Manski
https://www.SarahManski.com
Ben Manski
https://www.BenManski.com
1
Department of Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara,
CA 93106‑7065, USA
2
Department of Global Studies, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara,
CA 93106‑7065, USA
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152 S. Manski, B. Manski
The building of the blockchain is predicted to harken the end of the contempo-
rary sovereign order. This may seem an overly grandiose prediction for a technol-
ogy that, to the novice, might seem to be little more than an online database that
everyone can view but not change. Yet the claim of blockchain’s revolutionary
potential is widely made. The technology is said by banking officials to ‘chal-
lenge the sovereignty of states’ (Central Bank of Ireland; see Ulm 2014) with a
new ‘Sovereign Blockchain’ (FirstRand Bank; see Higgins 2016), and by tech-
nologists to allow individuals to become ‘Self-Sovereign’ (IBM; see Miller 2017)
through ‘the internet of sovereignty’ (BitNation; see Tempelhof and Teissonniere
2017). Such claims regarding the changing structure of sovereignty tend to clus-
ter around three functional qualities of blockchain: first, its use as a ledger of
transactions of digital assets; second, its wide distribution among stakeholders/
maintainers; third, its encryption of the transactions stored in ‘blocks’ of data
linked together chronologically in a chain. Altogether, these function to facilitate
new forms of trustless exchange, speed information sharing and connectivity, and
disintermediate service provision by central entities. As a powerful decentering
technology, it is argued, blockchain contests the dominant institutions of world
capitalism.
Are such claims merited? It is true that blockchain technology is still in its
infancy and that there are significant hurdles to widespread commercial adoption.
Pointing to cryptocurrencies’ early problems, it has lately become fashionable
among the punditry to declare the entirety of blockchain a hoax (Gerard 2017).
Yet we cannot help but note the prevalence of articles that at once predict block-
chain to have no major effects while at the same time castigating the technol-
ogy for undermining the power of regulatory authorities, financial institutions,
juridical bodies—take your pick (e.g. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase; see Gandel
2015). We believe the claims of blockchain technologists to be worthy of critical
attention because they represent intelligent consideration, resource investment,
and strategic action toward particular ends; they are literally coding the world
they wish to see. The cognitive praxis of agents engaged in social change activi-
ties can be a particularly useful source of empirical data (Manski 2018). While
we do not here provide a thorough evaluation of claims, we do use them as sign-
posts pointing the way forward from in-process projects toward possible futures.
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No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in… 153
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154 S. Manski, B. Manski
Box 1 Seven tendencies of blockchain technology and the structural qualities that produce them
1. Verifiability Transactions are assured through encrypted network consensus mechanisms in such a
form that all transactions from the very first to the most recent are recorded in a ledger open to its
maintainers, reducing information asymmetries
2. Globality Digital transactions and cultural information flows transcend geographic space and national
borders
3. Liquidity Value liquidity is enhanced as the location of a store of value that does not depend or is not
under the direct control of a sovereign, central bank or private corporation
4. Permanence The ledger of transaction is immutable by design
5. Ethereality Transactions are conducted in a digital medium
6. Decentralization The ledger is widely distributed among many stakeholders and maintainers
7. Future Focus Found in newer developments of blockchain such as Ethereum, a stored autonomous
self-reinforcing agency (SASRA) is formed in the temporal displacement of action through the use of
smart contracts enabling the prefigurative recording of future transactions
Possible Futures
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No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in… 155
Individual Sovereignty
The technical politics of the Bitcoin blockchain are often described as libertarian in
part because the design choices of this first blockchain emphasize the technology’s
tendencies toward liquidity and decentralization. The builders of blockchain tech-
nology emerged from the self-identified cypherpunk movement of cryptologists and
coders; Satoshi Nakamoto was a member. As Nakamoto wrote in an email to early
collaborator Hal Finney, ‘It’s very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can
explain it properly’ (Nakamoto 2008b).
Back when Satoshi had first launched the software, his writings were drily
focused on the technical specifications of the programming. But after the first
few weeks, Satoshi began emphasizing the broader ideological motivations for
the software to help win over a broader audience. (Popper 2015 p. 30)
Those economic libertarians who identify as ‘Ancap’ (or ‘anarcho-capitalist’)
claim society best facilitates individual will in a free-market economy free from
regulation by states or large corporations. The discourse of Bitcoin enthusiasts is
revealing: the use of the term ‘mining’ to describe blockchain maintenance and
‘coin’ to describe a chain of digital signatures speaks to their fondness for gold.
At the same time, libertarians generally share a faith in progressive technological
determinism, believing that society can be improved and that social relationships
and institutions can function more effectively through the use of new technologi-
cal tools. Blockchain forms, such as Bitcoin, institutionalize this ideal by enabling
a form of trustless direct exchange among individual property owners. Applications
such as uPort ID seek to wrest control of personal data from major corporations
and governments, as well as to provide privacy protections to individuals (Con-
senSys 2015). Evidence is widespread and multiplying of efforts by technologists
to use blockchain technology to challenge existing hierarchical institutional forms
with peer-to-peer networks. It seems questionable, however, whether large numbers
of people—as citizens, consumers, producers, etc.—will embrace a total shift from
regulatory oversight toward a disaggregated society of autonomous individuals pick-
ing and choosing between peer-to-peer legal codes of arbitration and enforcement of
agreements.
Popular Sovereignty
After more than two centuries of building a world beyond capitalist logics, the coop-
erative movement is well positioned to make the most of blockchain’s tendencies
toward globality, liquidity, permanence, decentralization and future focus. Through
these, blockchain is beginning to convert the long standing vision of a popular
‘cooperative commonwealth’ into the actual construction of a ‘global technologi-
cal commonwealth’ enacted through the use of advanced exchange, communication,
and governance technologies (Manski 2017). There are many current examples of
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156 S. Manski, B. Manski
Technological Sovereignty
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No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in… 157
Corporate Sovereignty
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158 S. Manski, B. Manski
Many have claimed that blockchain technology will inevitably weaken the nation
state, and in the final analysis, it may. Yet at the moment, national and transnational
state institutions are actively working to support and regulate favoured types of block-
chain activity and otherwise, where blockchain applications are disfavoured, ‘to regu-
late it out of existence’ (Nicolaci da Costa 2018). They are going about this by crimi-
nally investigating initial coin offering (or ‘ICOs’) (De 2018), demanding currency
exchanges turn over user information (Paul 2018), enacting capital gains taxes on cryp-
tocurrency trades (Bernard 2018), criminalizing non-state cryptocurrencies (Iyer and
Anand 2018), and more. At the same time, major powers such as China, Russia, Japan,
and the United States, as well as regional technology leaders like Uruguay, Estonia,
Slovenia, and Kenya—as well as subsidiary states—are all jockeying for comparative
strategic advantage in the development and deployment of new blockchain technolo-
gies (Tapscott and Tapscott 2016).
Such interventions signal the possibilities for states to expand their reach. In block-
chain’s tendencies toward verifiability, globality, permanence, and future focus, state
actors are finding greater capacities to intervene globally in the daily lives of individu-
als. These expanded capacities are making possible the emergence of new technologi-
cal totalitarian forms of state sovereignty. To begin with, states cannot easily control
what they cannot measure, and a blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) amplified
by artificial intelligence furthers the degree with which states can monitor the material
and social world. The rapidly expanding IoT is expected to more than triple in size by
2020 to nearly 21 billion devices (Stravridis and Weinstein 2016). When there is a tiny
blockchain-connected chip embedded in each material object with which we interact,
state institutions will assuredly seek to monitor and discipline the personal, political,
and economic activities of the many.
This prediction should not be controversial. Political parties in power regularly use
targeted voter suppression technologies to gain partisan political advantage (Palast
2000; Norris 2014; Simon 2016). Police forces use technology to engage in ‘predic-
tive policing’ that disproportionately targets communities of colour (Jouvenal 2016;
Winston 2018). State welfare agencies use technology to track and restrict how food
assistance money is spent or pension fraud or error (Templeton 2016; UK Govern-
ment Chief Scientific Adviser 2016). The Chinese state is moving to a whole new level
of state control with the creation of a national reputation system ranking individuals
based on their economic and social status (Chinese State Council 2014). Altogether,
recent history gives us reason to expect that state interventions into the development of
blockchain technology are more likely to lead in a totalitarian rather than democratiz-
ing direction.
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No Gods, No Masters, No Coders? The Future of Sovereignty in… 159
Conclusion
How strange, then, that one does not find much democracy at all in syn-
thetic worlds. Not a trace, in fact. Not a hint of a shadow of a trace. It’s not
there. The typical governance model in synthetic worlds consists of isolated
moments of oppressive tyranny embedded in widespread anarchy. (Cas-
tronova 2008, p. 207)
Technology can deliver more than one type of technological civilization.
We have not yet exhausted its democratic potential. (Feenberg 2010, p. 29)
Earlier we stated that as a still young technology, blockchain offers interpretive
flexibility. Yet as proposals become institutions, interpretation comes under the
influence of structural forces. Structures possess within them powers that lean in
some directions and not others. The structures of blockchain technology, we have
found, tend more toward more distributed, democratized, and technologized sov-
ereignties. Yet many of these same tendencies can be—and are being—channelled
and recast both by corporate capital and states; actors that are well prepared and
highly incentivized to take advantage. Corporations in particular have both a tem-
poral advantage as early movers as well as the resources to hire technologists and
rent state officials in attempts to both code and regulate the blockchain world of
the near future. Against such advantages, we see little likelihood of effective dis-
aggregated resistance by libertarian proponents of individual sovereignty.
Popular sovereignty, on the other hand, may have a future. Cooperatives and
democracy activists may find themselves capable of overcoming their early struc-
tural disadvantages by building a coalition of technologies and broader publics.
As we have repeatedly pointed out, much of the motivating ideology and daily
practice of blockchain coders is idealistic, utopian, decentralist, and coopera-
tive. Furthermore, many blockchain technologists became wealthy through early
investments in cryptocurrencies and are thus free of the dictates of wage slavery.
As the proximate constitutionalizers of the new blockchain world, technologists
are in a potentially determinative position and their affinities matter. Add in the
strong desire for the kind of world society that cooperatives are programming into
their blockchain applications that was articulated in the global democracy wave
of 2008-2014, and we see that a rising of global popular sovereignty may not be
so improbable after all.
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